e-News bulletin 26 May 2017

At 3 a.m. Monday morning, the homestead of Danca in Mtentu village, Xolobeni woke up to a barrage of gun shots. A police car with uniformed police was arriving.

On Monday afternoon, we knew they were from SAPS in Port Shepstone. What effectively turned out to be a SAPS assault party had been driving 2.5 hours to reach Mtentu, close to the Mkhambathi nature reserve. wwmp.org.za/

The U.S. is waging a massive shadow war in Africa, exclusive documents reveal The October 2016 report offers insight into what the U.S. military’s most elite forces are currently doing in Africa and what they hope to achieve. In so doing, it paints a picture of reality on the ground in Africa today and what it could be 30 years from now.

...The West took it upon itself to use NATO to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi — not for any humanitarian threat to civilians as had been repeatedly claimed — but because his planned roll-out of a new currency to be used across Africa posed a palpable existential threat to central banks at the heart of the Western financial and political system. realitieswatch.com/

By Ilan Pappé - Two myths compose the common narrative on the Six Day War. One myth is that the war was imposed on Israel, and the second myth is that after Israel’s stunning victory it was willing to achieve peace with all Arab countries and the Palestinians. Both myths can now more easily be challenged and debunked. thecairoreview.com/

Two dates are often used to frame the so-called Palestinian-Israeli conflict: Nakba Day on May 15 and Naksa Day on June 5. Nakba means catastrophe", a reference to the violence meted out against the Palestinian Arab population during the period of British colonialism in Palestine that morphed into the Zionist colonisation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population from their historic homeland in 1947 and 1948. Naksa, on the other hand, means the "letdown".

The leftwing movement of criticism of Israel is getting more and more mainstream by the second. Everyone is walking the path; they’re just getting there a little later. The Washington Post, a hotbed of neoconservative ideas for the last 15 years, has another article harshly critical of Israel today, written by an Israeli. And guess what: that article along with yesterday’s article by the two prestige Jewish academics calling for boycott of Israel are the two “most-read” articles on the Post list this morning! - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/10/washington-unrepairable-society/#sthash.oCjj9TSf.dpuf

The Washington Post, a hotbed of neoconservative ideas for the last 15 years, has another article harshly critical of Israel today, written by an Israeli. And guess what: that article along with yesterday’s article by the two prestige Jewish academics calling for boycott of Israel are the two “most-read” articles on the Post list this morning! - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/10/washington-unrepairable-society/#sthash.oCjj9TSf.dpuf

A California company has built an automated system that vacuums the fruit straight off trees. “The robot’s got to be able to identify an apple, and then after that, tell if it is ripe. It takes a lot of specialized sensors and cameras to do that.” scientificamerican.com/

Uber said Tuesday that it had made a mistake in the way it calculated its commissions, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to its New York drivers, and the company vowed to correct the practice and make the drivers whole for the lost earnings. nytimes.com/

According to current and former employees, the corporate culture at Airbnb has become ‘toxic’ over the last year. In 2015, Glassdoor ranked the company as the #1 place to work, in 2017 that ranking dropped to 35th, and many employees are speaking out. brokeassstuart.com/

Andre Gunder Frank’s “The Development of Underdevelopment” is widely recognized as one of the founding texts of dependency theory, influencing generations of academics and activists. Admired, followed, criticized, denounced, and rediscovered, Frank’s seminal text deserves a place among the key documents of postwar radical political economy. monthlyreview.org/